Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt (1913–2009) began photographing the streets of New York, her hometown, in the late 1930s, focusing mainly on poor neighborhoods such as Hispanic Harlem and the Lower East Side, where the street clearly takes center stage as the setting for everyday life. Her camera was directed mainly at children and their games in the streets. These scenes of children occupy a central place in a body of work that, as a whole, captivates us with its ability to transform everyday scenes into images that convey all the emotion, mystery, and humor that life can contain, and with which the viewer establishes an immediate connection even though they lack an explicit narrative. Her work soon gained the recognition it deserved, and in 1943 the MOMA in New York organized her first solo exhibition (Photographs of Children).

Later in her career, she also became closely interested in film and color photography. In 1948, she collaborated on the documentary The Quiet One and co-directed In the Street, another documentary about the streets of Hispanic Harlem. Both titles were highly influential in the subsequent evolution of documentary filmmaking by artists such as Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol.

After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 to explore chromatic techniques, she began experimenting with color photography, a medium in which she would also develop pioneering work.

A socially committed artist, Levitt was one of the first women to forge a professional career in photography. This exhibition is the first to be based on her entire body of work and archives, which have only recently been made available to the public.

Curator: Joshua Chuang